"Were We Wrong?"

That's the question the June 28 issue of The New Republic dedicates itself to. It sports a Who's Who of liberal hawks and interventionists, including Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Kenneth Pollack, Paul Berman and Sen. Joe Biden.

I feel a bit sorry for The New Republic, an esteemed liberal magazine that a.) supported the war but b.) loathes George W. Bush. To remain pro-war must feel to its writers like grabbing hold of a painfully jagged rock even as the current is trying to pull you to more comfortable waters where all your friends are frolicking.

The magazine offers an excellent post-mortem (for want of a better word) of the war, with a few unapologetic liberal hawks standing by their support and more offering qualified support. But taken as a whole, the issue is a thoughtful distillation of what is going on in the increasingly wobbly pro-war liberal circles these days. It's a veritable Wobble-palooza.

The upshot seems to be that since the postwar reconstruction is going so badly, liberals should have no responsibility for their decision. "I still have great difficulty fathoming why the administration chose not to fight the war the right way," declares Kenneth Pollack, the former Clinton administration NSA staffer who wrote the definitive book in favor of war, "The Threatening Storm."

By the way: The right way, according to Pollack, was his way.

Now, I should say that in hindsight I, too, think it would have been nice if things went his way. It would have been nice if the intelligence on WMDs had been better; if France hadn't actively sought to undermine us; if the Turks had let us send troops across their border; if human rights groups hadn't in effect rallied around a mass-murderer; if President Bush were more articulate, and so forth.

But as we all learned the first time we got socks for our birthday, you don't always get what you want. You don't even get what you expect.

People forget now that most opponents of the war were insisting all sorts of terrible things would happen that didn't. For example, they insisted there would be a massive humanitarian crisis with untold millions of refugees pouring over the borders. Didn't happen.

Lots of other stuff didn't happen either, of course, including lots of Iraqis greeting American troops with flowers and candy.

Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic (and a friend of mine), has been complaining for a very long time that conservatives haven't shown the sort of introspection liberals have in the wake of the White House's missteps. After all, conservatives historically have looked skeptically on pie-in-the-sky Wilsonian adventures abroad - and especially on the notion that the Pentagon has some sort of Easy Bake Oven nation-building set that can whip up democratic societies overnight. Now it is the liberals and leftists who sound like Kissingerian foreign policy realists, making allowances for barbaric regimes and ridiculing conservatives who needlessly demonized Saddam.

But Saddam was a demon. Since we've been in Iraq, we've confirmed that he killed more than 300,000 Shiites after 1991 alone. We've found up to 30,000 in a single grave. Forty thousand "marsh Arabs" were murdered and their lands drained. We didn't need to confirm what happened to the Kurds.

It's also worth recalling the reason we were in a de facto state of war with Saddam long before the actual war: It was to keep Saddam from doing these sorts of things to Kurds and Shiites again (never mind the Kuwaitis). The no-fly zones, the laughably and tragically inept sanctions regime - which was making Saddam stronger and French and UN bureaucrats richer - the various cruise missile attacks: These were all acts of war necessary to "keep Saddam in his box." And that whole system was falling apart. Bush faced a choice: Let Saddam out of his box or get rid of him. The former would make Saddam a hero, lower the price for defying America and further solidify the law of the jackboot in the Arab world. After 9/11 Bush felt he had no choice at all. We had to force changes in the Arab world before the Arab world forced worse things on us.

Removing Saddam has had unforeseeable bad consequences, as well as some foreseeable ones. But it seems to me that liberals who now think we shouldn't have done it, solely because we didn't do it "just right," are falling prey to their own historic pie-in-the-skyism. There is no "just right" way to do things like this. If there were, we would have toppled Saddam with nerf bats.

Beinart is right that conservatives should do some hard thinking about our experience in Iraq. But no matter how cathartic it may be for liberals to sooth their consciences by saying this isn't the war they signed up for, this is the war we've got. And the shoulda-coulda-wouldas can wait until we win.

Author, Jonah Goldberg, wrote: "...the laughably and tragically inept sanctions regime - which was making Saddam stronger."

Those "inept" sanctions were a blunt instrument that killed over one million Iraqi civilians. Designed to weaken and debilitate the infrastructure of Iraq, the sanctions were designed by people who knew Saddam would not be impacted... the target was the civilian population. The strategy was to squeeze the people... denying them food, medicine, and other vital necessities, thinking they would eventually turn on the dictator who ruled over them. That particular aspect of the sanctions regime failed, but the main objective... that of destroying the infrastructure of Iraq succeeded. Common working people bore the brunt and died in droves.

It is often argued by some that the mass death from the sanctions is Saddam's responsibility, that instead of building palaces for himself he could have used his wealth to feed the masses and provide them with medicines. What kind of logic is this? Would you have expected Hitler to build Synagogues for the Jewish people? Of course Saddam was going to use the wealth of the nation to support himself while the masses died... he was a dictator. The sanctions regime was immoral and murderous. It took the lives of hundreds of thousands who died of malnutrition and curable disease. Yes, Saddam was a mass murderer... but so were the people who implemented the "laughably and tragically inept sanctions regime."

Jonah Goldberg also wrote: "People forget now that most opponents of the war were insisting all sorts of terrible things would happen that didn't."

Let's see now, opponents of the war insisted that invading and occupying Iraq would lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians... an endless and costly guerilla war.... the total destablization of the region... an upsurge in terrorism that would make Americans a target all around the globe... the extreme alienation of traditional allies... the setting of a dangerous precident with America's "pre-emptive strike" policy... and last but not least... the US invasion and occupation of Iraq would make it easy for Al-Qaida to recruit members from amongst the millions of outraged people in the Islamic world. Yes... all of these terrible things DID happen and the crisis continues to unfold and deepen.

Goldberg closed with the following: "...the shoulda-coulda-wouldas can wait until we win."

That's a nice fantasy, however, America has already LOST the war in Iraq. There is no "light at the end of the tunnel." There is no "winning the hearts and minds of the people." All indications are that the great majority of Iraqis oppose the US being in their country... even a poll conducted by the occupation "authority" revealed that truth.

Would you have expected Hitler to build Synagogues for the Jewish people? Of course Saddam was going to use the wealth of the nation to support himself while the masses died... he was a dictator.

----And the profits Saddam would've got from free trade as if he'd done nothing wrong would also have bought more palaces while his people were tortured..

----Now the sanctions are over and what-a-surprise, liberals are whining. Nothing is ever done right for a liberal unless it's 500% over budget and benefits our enemies.



Jonah Goldberg also wrote: "People forget now that most opponents of the war were insisting all sorts of terrible things would happen that didn't."

Let's see now, opponents of the war insisted that invading and occupying Iraq would lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians... an endless and costly guerilla war.... the total destablization of the region... an upsurge in terrorism that would make Americans a target all around the globe... the extreme alienation of traditional allies... the setting of a dangerous precident with America's "pre-emptive strike" policy... and last but not least... the US invasion and occupation of Iraq would make it easy for Al-Qaida to recruit members from amongst the millions of outraged people in the Islamic world. Yes... all of these terrible things DID happen and the crisis continues to unfold and deepen.

-----All that you mention was not what the lefties predicted. It's what happened, in varying degrees, AFTER the fact. You think Al Gayda would've stopped recruiting after 9-11? You're sadly mistaken. Supporting Clintonian appeasment is what emboldened these savages.



Goldberg closed with the following: "...the shoulda-coulda-wouldas can wait until we win."

That's a nice fantasy, however, America has already LOST the war in Iraq.

----Only in the mind of the liberal who WANTS the US to lose. Just like the newscasting traitors who fucked up Vietnam with their lies.

----You're screwed anyway cause a Kerry presidency, (just under hell freezing over on the probability scale) would STILL back the war.

Sorry to have to inform you... but even bu$h's hand picked 9-11 Commission has reported that there were NO LINKS between Saddam's regime and Al-Qaida terrorists. And in case you STILL haven't noticed... bu$h LIED about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. If you'll remember, Iraq possessing such weapons was the PRIMARY reason used to justify the invasion and occupation. Americans were not told we needed to invade Iraq because Saddam was a nasty character... we were told we needed to invade because Saddam had chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and that he was going to use them against us. Remember... we were going to "liberate" the Iraqi people. But now, apologists for this miserable failure of a foreign policy can only refer to Iraqis as "enemies" and "savages." Yes... you've already lost the war, the war that should never have been. The war based on lies, deceits, and deception. A fool's war.

The famous anti-Saddam guerrilla leader known as the "Lord of the Marshes", Abu Hatem, has joined the resistance against the US occupation.

Abu Hatem lead the resistance against Saddam for 17 years. Hatem's people, the "marsh Arabs", suffered under Saddam and boldly defied his regime. Saddam's response was to drain the marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates... destroying the 5,000 year old traditional life of the people there. The people began an armed rebellion against Saddam... and fought bitterly against his army under the leadership of Abu Hatem. To westerners, Hatem was a hero. His forces assisted the US led invasion.

... but things have changed. Here is what the Lord of the Marshes says about today's circumstances:

"We are now an occupied country. What is the difference between the dictatorships of Saddam and the dictatorship of Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq?"

Abu Hatem... Lord of the Marshes, is now on the run. His forces engaged in a firefight with the UK occupation troops and the occupation "authority" wants him arrested. So even old Iraqi friends and allies have turned their backs on the US (or visa versa, witness the disgraced Chalabi).

You can read more about the Lord of the Marshes, at:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=534227

And if it wasn't for the U.S. I wouldn't have been born, but people like you and Prescott Bush tried to keep Americans from saving the day during WWII. So nothing is certain, all parties of politics are fallible, money talks, bullshit walks, and you can keep your ad hoc theory of Arabs being evil because we attack them to yourself. Because frankly no one who has ever felt the scourge of Arab Fascism(bred by Hitler originally), can agree that there wasn't some benefit to killing the bastard and setting up bases to fight off Iranians and Syrians who hate you for no other reason than the fact that they are crooks who rob their own people and we don't like it. So let us let our crooks beat up their crooks and we'll all be like Tony Soprano's kids, comfortable and unaware. The war was indeed mishandled, Bush is an egit and a half as my Irish gramma friend used to say, Mossad could have killed sadam much quieter and with less collateral damage, but no one lets the Jews do it right so the Jews always just clean up the mistakes later. For instance, for the first time, the pesh merga army is 75,000 strong and no longer defeatable by their Sunni or Shia nemeses. For once, the Israelis have made it so when we leave, the Kurds will never again face annihilation.

And they may even save the other minorities with such a strong Israeli trained minority rights protection force.

It's one thing at least someone has done right.

- but no one lets the Jews do it right -

Maybe it's just me. Not being aware of any bias toward jewish peole I can't say anything but this. There was this girl I was just dating and somewhat into the relationship she informed me she was jewish waiting for some response and seemed disipointed there wasn't one. It seems to me jews care more about being jews than anyone else.

Sorry to have to inform you... but even bu$h's hand picked 9-11 Commission has reported that there were NO LINKS between Saddam's regime and Al-Qaida terrorists.

----they never claimed there WERE connections...even the NY Times admitted as much. let's not kid ourselves though...a picture of saddam and usama sucking each other's dicks wouldn't be evidence enough for liberals, still SO DAMNED MAD about being kicked out of power.

And in case you STILL haven't noticed... bu$h LIED about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. If you'll remember, Iraq possessing such weapons was the PRIMARY reason used to justify the invasion and occupation.

----How long are you fellows going to CLING to this horseshit about Bush "lying." No lies were told. The WHOLE WORLD--including your precious Hillary--thought he had WMD. And he DID have them for over 12 years...I'm sure something about the invasion DUE DATE we gave the bastard allowed him time to stash the shit away.

-----Saddam himself was a WMD and we got rid of him.

But now, apologists for this miserable failure of a foreign policy can only refer to Iraqis as "enemies" and "savages." Yes... you've already lost the war, the war that should never have been. The war based on lies, deceits, and deception. A fool's war.

----To liberals, the only wars that are good wars are unwinnable ones. That islam is a murderous gutter religion and 3000 Americans were killed on 9-11 by islamofascists is no myth or illusion. We're at war and that's that. Civilization versus barbarism.

The famous anti-Saddam guerrilla leader known as the "Lord of the Marshes", Abu Hatem, has joined the resistance against the US occupation.

----He won't have to resist long. We're leaving on the 30th. Then the fuckheads can kill each other all they want. Shoulda nuked them the first time around.

"We're leaving on the 30th."

Do you even have the SLIGHTEST idea what the fuck you are talking about?

Who is "leaving" on the 30th?

...get a fuckin' clue, wouldya?

They were just against this particular war.

The "anti-war" demos for Afghanistan were a fraction of the size of those against war in Iraq.

The "doves" against the war in Iraq weren't just peacenicks; among them were a lot of people who just saw this as a bad war. There was insufficient cause, excessive risk, and the sneaking suspicion that Bush was out to avenge his father, and make money for his friends.

The liberal hawks were done in by their extreme Western imperialist hearts. They were seduced by the idea of spreading democracy, from the top, down.

I guess you can call me a radical leftist hawk. I think that wars can be conducted, and won, if the troops fighting it are fighting for their own democracy, and if they're organized by popular internal governments that are democratically structured.

These people can fight, and win. If the government in power is not well funded by outside nations, the politics of the situation can turn, and the government changed. Unfortunately, the government in power is sometimes funded by the USA. We fund them because they represent for the business interests of American corporations.

If Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait, he woulda been left alone.

Per the aftermath of his '91 defeat if he'd allowed weapons inspections and cooperated with the world's requests for compliance, he woulda been left alone.

We all know the rest.

As shaky and primitive the current arrangement, how are we supposed to have a world governing body with any authority while a Saddam runs amok?



Socialism: a fancy word for "Saddam by committee"

How did you 'more rationalize' your beliefs about war with Clinton's clusterfucks in Somalia and the Balkans, including his bald lies about genocide?

People driven by personal animosity towards "Bu$h" just refuse to see it.

Future historians will be puzzled by this outbreak of iraationality, it hardly matters in the scheme of things.

"How did you 'more rationalize' your beliefs about war with Clinton's clusterfucks in Somalia and the Balkans, including his bald lies about genocide?"

I didn't.

...when will you fuckin' IDIOTS get a clue an realize that THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRAT WEBSITE...



...jeez you guys are fuckin' dumb....